Power Failure

                      Power Failure

"There used to be widely shared boundaries on personal and public behavior. Not anymore. A lot of people no longer know how to behave or where the lines are that one shouldn’t cross.

Or, as with last summer’s political street protests, the former lines and limits have been erased. That July’s Democratic National Convention passed without one person addressing the destruction in numerous cities was a big event, a turning point, for U.S. society generally.

We are paying a high price for this transition to few limits. Derek Chauvin is about to pay a very high price for not knowing when to let up on George Floyd.

Most striking is how many people have become unconscious of or psychologically detached from the consequences of what they are doing."

This is from a wsj editorial. They are only observing; they offer no conclusion. As if there is not an obvious one. Power does not simply restrain and punish, it shepherds and rewards. Guidelines are maintained by power, internal or external. Contrary to what the revolutionary thinks, violence does not lead to liberating power, violence arises in the absence of power. It is the demonstration of the current power's failure.